


And The Road Becomes My Bride

by Enigel



Category: Traveler
Genre: Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enigel/pseuds/Enigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for pollyrepeat in the Yuletide 2008 Challenge.</p>
    </blockquote>





	And The Road Becomes My Bride

**Author's Note:**

> Written for pollyrepeat in the Yuletide 2008 Challenge.

Jay remembered one of his morning runs with Will. The sky was a crisp blue, the morning chill mixing with the oblique sun for the perfect weather. He had a wonderful girlfriend, good friends, a good university record, and a summer of adventure in front of him. Life was good and Jay felt he deserved it.

They paused for a breather before returning, and Will smiled at him as they pulled out their water bottles.

"I feel really lucky to be housed with you guys. You don't always find two roommates you can get along with."

"Yeah," said Jay, "I was a bit worried before. What if I ended up with some noisy frat boys, party-goers, or worse - republicans?"

Will laughed and nodded.

"Living together is the real test of friendship, and we didn't even know each other. You never know if the funny guy who's the soul of the party won't turn out to be the one who litters the common room with toenail clippings, or," he added looking slyly at Jay, "if the genius lawyer is secretly a pervert and will turn the house into a dungeon."

"Ha, ha," Jay said dryly, playfully punching Will in the shoulder. "Or the free spirited Kerouac fan a government made clone implanted to spy on the country's most promising minds."

"Clones are always a possibility," Will nodded in mock-seriousness, and then they both laughed.

"I think traveling together is the acid test though," Jay said.

He'd been pondering this before they'd accepted Will's idea of a roadtrip. Tyler was cool and easy-going, but he hated mornings and would be slower to budge. Will was more like him in that respect, he'd be more adaptable on the road, but Tyler's definition of fun was closer to Will's rather than Jay's.

"Mhm," Will agreed around his powerbar, "but we're already a team, man. We'll be awesome."

* * *

The contrast to the memory was a study in irony. They were hauled up in a decrepit barn, chilly and drafty in the winter's rain and gloom.

Jay had instinctively picked a spot from where he could have all the space under his observation. Will had (perhaps just as instinctively, perhaps from a reflex honed into him by his spy training) chosen a similar vantage point. He was also close to a stack of boxes - cover or weapon in an emergency, thought Jay.

"How long do we have to rot here?" asked Tyler all of a sudden.

He'd been brooding in a corner, sitting on a wood plank, closer to Jay than to Will and not looking at either of them.

"Until tomorrow night at the least," Will answered, clipped but non-aggressive. He was on his best behavior with Tyler, at least in the beginning of such conversations. "It's better to move by night, and they can't have tracked us yet. We should be safe here for now."

"Yeah, safe and cozy," Tyler said dryly, "but not making any progress."

"This is not going to be an overnight thing, Tyler," Jay said mildly. "We have to gather evidence all over again, and we won't find another witness like Freed."

"Do you think the Porter could help us?"

"I have no idea where and how to find him," Will admitted with a frown. "He's not in my network of contacts, so I can't guarantee anything about his agenda."

"Yeah, why did he help us escape, twice, then left us entirely on our own?"

"Maybe he got a sick pleasure out of it," Tyler suggested, always the one with the cynical alternative at times like these.

"Maybe he represented a third party."

"I think we might be already at four parties here, and none of them makes any freaking sense."

No one said anything for a while, the pitter-patter of rain the only soundtrack to their gloomy meeting, until Will spoke in a desultory tone.

"I know someone who might have some intel, to make sense of at least some parts of it."

"Why do I sense a 'but' here?" sighed Jay.

"Because he's the kind of guy I'd rather keep as my last resource," Will said. He was looking down at the floor with a grim face.

"So go to the other resources."

"That's the 'but', there aren't any others."

"Scraping the bottom of the spy barrel, eh?" Tyler asked with a smile that looked more like a pained grimace.

"No. More like poking the sleeping snake."

"And where's this snake we're going to poke then?"

"Hopefully in town. We're moving into the city tomorrow night, I know an apartment we can squat in for a few days, maybe even a week."

"Boy, I can't wait to sleep on something else than moldy hay." Tyler sighed, then turned to address Will. "There _is_ something else than moldy hay in there, right?"

* * *

"There aren't going to be just backwards motels though, right? I mean, we're following the spirit of Kerouac's book, not the letter."

"Why, afraid your pampered ass will freeze and catch a cold, city boy?" Will poked Tyler and, in an inspired use of the ice cubes not dunked in whiskey yet, slid one under his collar.

"Ow! No, I just don't like squalor."

"Boheme is not the same as squalor, my friend," Will said emphatically. "_We_ will be living la vie boheme."

"But it might occasionally involve squalid just the same," Jay piped in teasingly, "so be prepared!"

"For the unexpected!" Will clinked his glass against Jay's and Tyler's.

* * *

The apartment turned out to be more generic than a furniture catalog. It was more cramped than the barn, but luckily there were enough rooms, tiny as they were, so that they could avoid each other when the tension reached buzzing levels.

"He's the 'don't call us, we'll call you' kind of guy," Will was saying.

"And how does he know you want him to call you?"

Will regarded Tyler irritably, and Jay braced himself for yet another guerilla battle of nerves. He'd grown weary of getting between them, and was not very inclined to defend Will anyway. Tyler bottled up enough anger as it was, maybe it was good to let it out once in a while.

"Just because we haven't had your high and mighty spy training doesn't mean you should just herd us like sheep. You made us into outlaw fugitives, you'd better teach us some tricks of the trade, don't you think?"

"You wanna learn trade tricks? You wanna do 'the spy thing' too? Be my guest," Will said, pushing a small box into Tyler's hands.

"Go plant the message in the dead drop, then. Be sure you're not followed, noticed or recognized. Then wait. Wait to see if you hear back from your contact. Maybe he's busy. Maybe he doesn't want to help you. Maybe he's dead. Maybe he calls, and you meet, and he betrays you. Can you tell when someone's about to turn on you?"

"Obviously not," Tyler snapped, interrupting Will's tirade.

Will stopped and bit his lip, apparently surprised himself by what he'd said, but the tough guy won in the end.

"Exactly. But if you want to take matters into your own hands, be my guest."

"Fine, I can't. We still need you."

"Hey, I'm in this too. I'm as deep in this shit as the two of you, I'm just better prepared to deal with it."

"You'd better, since you got us into it."

"And I might be able to pull us out of it."

"Yeah, such a great team we make now, Will," Jay said dryly.

For a second, Will's mask was replaced by a haunted, lost look, then his features smoothed over again.

"I'm less conspicuous by myself," he said.

"Yeah, I know. Go. We'll... hold the fort."

Tyler's voice had yielded something of its aggressiveness, but he wouldn't look at Will as he headed to the door.

"Will," Jay called just as Will was about to open the door. "Good luck," he said, and Will nodded and left.

"Yeah, good luck to all of us," Tyler said gloomily, long after Will was gone, "'cause we've been so lucky so far."

* * *

A door slammed somewhere in the corridor and they both jumped.

"Will's right," Tyler said. "The waiting is the worst."

"If this thing doesn't go anywhere," Jay said to prevent Tyler sliding further on the slope of moodiness, "I have an investigation of my own to make."

"You?"

"The things Freed said... What if there was an iota of truth in there?"

"About your father working for this mysterious Fourth Branch?"

"Yeah. I'm going to have to dig for information, talk to some of his army buddies, if I can find any. If they're still alive."

Tyler opened his mouth to say something, when the sound of a key in the lock stopped him. Both men stood up in the same time, looking warily at the door, but it was only Will.

"Hey," he said laconically. "No luck."

"No luck, he didn't show up, or no luck, he doesn't know anything?"

"No luck, he tried to kill me."

"Crap! Do we need to run?"

"What did you do?"

Tyler's and Jay's frantic questions crossed in the air.

Will replied to them with steel looks.

"I wasn't followed, and he won't be a problem."

Jay felt the hairs on his nape stand. Tyler looked haunted. They let themselves fall back on the sofa.

"Now what?"

"Now we look into my own family's closet for skeletons, so to say," Jay said grimly. "It's time I did some of my own spy thing. With help from both of you. It's time we made our own luck," he said, looking to Tyler.

"Yeah," Tyler said, mouth still twisted in a humorless smile. "Team Kerouac, go!"


End file.
